1. Statement of the Technical Field
The invention concerns dielectric substrates for RF circuits, and more particularly dielectric substrates with effective permittivity values that can be independently controlled in predetermined portions of the substrate.
2. Description of the Related Art
The design and fabrication of microwave circuits and antennas are based on standard materials that are available for printed wiring boards or ceramic substrates. Improvements in the standard materials are incremental and tend to be infrequent. Attempts at modifying the properties of the substrates by various means have been attempted occasionally, but they have not generally resulted in any process that is practical, reliable and robust.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,559,055 discloses a system for reducing the interlayer dielectric constant in a multilayer interconnect structure to increase device speed and performance. More particularly, the RC time constant of a semiconductor device is reduced by decreasing the capacitance C. The decrease in capacitance is achieved by replacing the interlayer silicon dioxide (dielectric constant of 4.0) with air (dielectric constant of 1.0). In either case, the final effective dielectric constant of the device is lowered, which results in higher device speed.
U.S. Pat. No. 6,175,337 discloses a high-gain, dielectric loaded, slotted waveguide antenna. The antenna makes use of a tailored dielectric structure in which the effective dielectric constant is incrementally or continuously reduced to have a dielectric constant close to that of the free-space value at an outer surface a distance from the waveguide array. The tailoring of the effective dielectric constant is achieved by layering a given number of slabs of different dielectric constants with sequentially reduced values, or by varying the chemical composition of the material, or by varying the density of the material imbedded with high dielectric constant particles.
Another approach to controlling the effective permittivity of a dielectric substrate is to perforate the board material in selected areas. This approach could be particularly well suited to ceramic substrates as they tend have a relatively high loss tangent and are therefore lossy. However, the perforating technique has also suffered from certain drawbacks. For example, the perforation of the substrate has tended to produce a weakened mechanical structure, particularly when the percentage of substrate material removed is high. Also, the perforations in the substrate are open to the environment and can therefore allow contaminants to collect within the structure. The conventional perforation techniques have also tended to produce dielectric substrates with effective permittivity values that are not consistent at each measurable point on the surface.
Another disadvantage of conventional perforated substrate system is that simply perforating the substrate will produce openings on both sides of the board. This interferes with the RF circuitry disposed on the substrate. Perforations can be drilled only partially through the substrate material to leave a continuous surface on at least one side. For example, laser drilling can be used for this purpose. However, difficulties are encountered in controlling the accuracy of the laser drilling process. In particular, it is difficult to precisely control the depth of drilled perforations so as to maintain a stable value of permittivity and loss tangent across the surface of the perforated area. Moreover, the drilling process leaves the internal structure of the substrate exposed on at least one side of the board.